


Fallen Princes

by Vaznetti



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-01 17:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16288475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaznetti/pseuds/Vaznetti
Summary: His terrible luck was clearly holding: Thor was exiled to some backwater world and ended up a beloved hero. Loki had hardly been here more than a few minutes and already people were trying to kill him.Loki falls to Westeros. One or two things change.





	Fallen Princes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wnnbdarklord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wnnbdarklord/gifts).



Loki woke in a drift of red and orange, crackling against his face like fire. Why doesn't it hurt? he wondered, and then, no, it isn't fire, he has been covered by fallen leaves, and the sun was shining through them against his eyes. He sat upright as the leaves scattered, wondering for a second what had caused his heart to beat so quickly, his blood to sing in his veins -- and saw the boy, barely even a child, at his shoulder, still holding the stick he had used to poke a god awake. He raised his arm again, and Loki lunged at him, teeth bared, grabbing the stick and twisting it out of the boy's hand. The boy's shriek was satisfying, until a huge black shape -- a hairy wolf-shaped thing -- came leaping at him, knocking him back down and fastening its teeth into his shoulder, and Loki realised that the boy wasn't screaming in terror but in rage.

The wolf-thing pulled him back up and shook him by the shoulder, hard enough to rip the arm from a mortal. Its strength was unnatural, and the shaking made Loki feel as if he was still falling. He tried to gather his strength as they over on the leaves, the wolf gnawing at his shoulder and the boy shouting encouragement at it, and Loki trying to reach his other arm up to force the jaws open; finally he found the power to summon his knife and pushed it up, skittering over the beast's ribs and into the flesh of its breast. The wolf whimpered and leaped back before the blade could go deep. The boy screamed, and yes, Loki thought, _that_ was pain. Although he hadn't touched the boy. He fell back against the ground, trying to sense how badly he'd been injured, focusing on the movement of his wounded arm. 

Crunching leaves brought him back to the present: not the boy or the wolf this time, but a dirty woman dressed in worn leather holding a long spear pointed at his throat. Loki started to raise his arms in surrender, wincing as the torn flesh stretched. The way her fingers tightened as she raised the spear was all the warning he had: he rolled to the side as she drove it down, into the leaves where his throat had just been.

"I was surrendering!" he said. "Don't you barbarians know what a surrender looks like?" She kept the spear pointed at him as he climbed to his feet. His terrible luck was clearly holding: Thor was exiled to some backwater world and ended up a beloved hero. Loki had hardly been here more than a few minutes and already people were trying to kill him. 

"Sorry," the woman muttered, before closing with him again. 

Ridiculous, Loki thought, as he let her stab through a double he left standing where he has been; she stumbled forward through the lack of resistance and he caught her by the back, his knife now at her throat. "Now," he said, "shall we again discuss what we mean by surrender?"

The spear dropped from the woman's hand; the boy started to rush at him but stopped when Loki tightened his grasp. "Let her go," the boy said. "Let her go or when Robb comes back he's going to kill you!"

"I don't know who Robb is, little boy," Loki said, "but you can be sure I am a match for him." He was not entirely sure of this: the long fall had left him unsteady on the ground, and the world around him seemed thin and unreal.

"That's what you know! Robb is the king now, and he's my brother, and when he comes back north he is going to kill you for hurting Shaggy and Osha!"

"Your brother is the king?" Loki asked. "Does that make you a prince? You don't look much like a prince."

"I'm in hiding!" the boy said, and then looked down, shuffling his feet. "No one is supposed to know."

Then perhaps you shouldn't reveal yourself to anyone, Loki thought, although the boy was so small that his boast were more amusing than anything else. He had once been that small, that proud; so had Thor, he thought, but pushed the thought away. Thor was nothing to him now. "Your disguise is very effective," he said.

"Liar," the boy said. "Osha says anyone who sees Shaggy will know it's me, and that's why we have to stay away from other people."

"The wolf?" Loki asked. He stepped away from the woman; she turned to him, glancing at her fallen spear but making no move toward it. "Is that why you had to kill me?" 

She nodded. "But you're no Northerner," she said. "What are you? What was that trick you pulled?" 

"He must be a wizard," the boy said. I heard about them from Maester Luwin. They can make you see things that aren't there, and they can do other stuff, like tell the future with blood and set swords on fire."

"There was no fire in that knife," Osha said. "It was cold, cold as ice. What are you?" There was fear in her eyes, and Loki probed into her mind to see its cause. Ice and snow and darkness, and beyond all that the gods of winter, for whom she had no name. She shuddered and looked away from him.

"I told you, a wizard," Rickon said. "Maybe if he's a wizard he can heal Shaggy?"

The wolf, Loki saw, had climbed to its feet again and was looming protectively behind the child. There was some bond between the two, Loki saw, shared strength and shared consciousness. It was as if a wolf was looking out of the boy's eyes. "Your creature will heal well enough on its own."

"Let him go, Rickon," Osha said. "I don't know what he is, but he's no friend of ours."

"No," Rickon said. "I'm the prince of Winterfell, and you have to do what I say!" He and the wolf were leaning against each other, and Loki could feel the boy trying to use their combined strength against his mind. Completely untrained, and completely ineffective, but there was power there. 

"Is he always like this?" he asked the woman.

"No." She scowled at him. "Go away, wizard, whatever you are."

"And tell the first person I meet that the young prince of Winterfell lives?" he mocked her. "That he's in hiding with only a wolf and a woman to protect him?"

She hesitated. "You aren't a Northerner. Who would believe you? And anyway, we could hide so well that you'd never find us."

"I doubt that," Loki said, although in truth he could feel the link between the boy and the land, and thought that the land might well protect him if it could. "Do you even have a plan, other than to hide until the boy's brother comes back? If he ever does; he can't be a very good king if he's already lost his home."

He could see the truth of his guess on Osha's face, but Rickon said, "Robb is coming back! He _is_!"

"Well," Loki said, "Perhaps so. And perhaps we should prepare for him by retaking your home ourselves." In his imagination he could see this young king returning to a castle already returned, to find his brother awaiting him, and Loki beside him; the hall began to look much like the throne room in Asgard in his mind, and Robb to look rather like Thor, but humble now, and grateful for what Loki had done for him. He shook his mind out of the fantasy. "Let me look at Shaggy's wound, and see what I can do about it." Rickon nodded, triumphant and almost gracious in what he saw as his victory, although the wolf bared its teeth as it settled onto its side. Never mind, Loki thought to himself as he considered the healing charms his mother had taught him. There was power here, magic in the land and in the wolf and in the boy. It was small, but it was a place to start.

Rickon was delighted by the small fire they built that night, although Osha had needed to walk around Loki's illusion before she agreed that it was safe. He hoped that she wasn't planning to cut his throat in the night -- if only because Rickon would object -- but just in case left an illusion sleeping by the fire while he hid in the shadows and considered his plans. It would be easy enough to recapture the boy's home with an illusory army, but holding it against a flesh-and-blood attack would be more difficult. There was also the boy's other brother to consider: older, but a cripple. Would they need to get rid of him as well? Neither Rickon nor Osha seemed to know where he was gone, although the woman guessed south, toward the lands Robb was fighting in; the road was blocked to them, but Bran's companions, she thought, would know the way through.

Beyond that she had little idea about potential allies for them. But that was what they needed, Loki thought: forces to hold the castle he would take. He through Osha's thoughts as she slept; her own people, the free folk, were one possibility, but they were weak, and afraid. He looked at what she knew of giants and rejected them as well, too few, too stupid. But the ones she called Others, the cold gods, they were another matter. Surely these creatures of ice and darkness were the obvious allies for a son of Laufey and Prince of Jotunheim as much as Asgard. They were deadly to humans, but winter was not something he needed to fear. With their help -- and with the armies of the dead they could command -- he would easily set himself, and Rickon as well, on a throne in Winterfell.

Osha tossed and turned, now that winter walked through her dreams, but did not wake to kill him in the night. In the morning he told them his plan -- not all the details, of course, but that he was going to search out the allies they would need to hold Winterfell once they retook it. He thought it likelt that Osha did not believe him, but that hardly mattered; he would find them on his return, he was sure. To remind them that he was the powerful one, he created a flash of light and disappeared as he left them; Osha was impressed by the illusion of invisibility but Rickon watched him go as if he knew where Loki was. He had forgotten, of course, that the wolf would be able to smell him, and that what the wolf knew, the boy would know as well. He would need to remember that in the future.

In the meantime, his path took him north, over the mountains; he avoided the small castles and pathetic villages of the humans who lived there, often travelling in the shape of a wolf himself. Once a pack of real wolves followed him for days, until he tired of their company and turned to drive them off; that night he took his human shape and slept in a shallow cave, but the ground was hard and cold. Hunters chased him twice as well, but a spell of confusion sent them wandering away, lost in the hills; one fell from the path into a ravine, and as Loki slipped away he could hear the man screaming.

That day he began to descend from the mountains. The land was wild here: he came across the ruins of villages and towers, but no sign that humans still lived here. The next night he slept in human form in a cottage with half a roof, and in the morning walked out on two legs. The path north took him through a grove of white trees, carved with bloody eyes and mouths. 

He had been aware of them before this, but the trees with faces had been too near the little human dwellings to approach, even though he could sense the magic in them. They watched him now as if they were alive; they were, of course, he reminded himself. There was no wind, but the leaves rustled as ravens hopped among their branches. A line of red sap dripped from the eye of the the largest tree; its other eye was scarred over and blinded. The hair stood up on Loki's head, but he forced himself to move forward to face it. Was anything looking back at him? Was Odin? He opened him mouth, but hwat was there to say? A boast of the power he would gain here? A demand to be left alone? He had already been abandoned. Surely it was unlikely that his father was watching at all. He probed the tree with his mind and saw --

The images jumbled in his mind: an old man dead by a pool, a baby laid by the roots of a tree like this, dead children with bright blue eyes, a white-haired man wrapped in roots below the ground. A ring of tall men stood around a tree like this and fed it with the blood of their captives, and red sap dripped from the eyes and mouth --

\--something looked back at him through those dripping red eyes. Not his father, after all. _You don't belong here_ , it seemed to say. _You have no roots in this world. Foreigner, invader, you will never rule here._

 _Try and stop me_ , he answered.

The land itself seemed to shake under his feet then, and he stumbled back, away from the tree. Just as the connection broke a different face seemed to stare at him, pale white skin and glowing blue eyes. It was beautiful and terrifying, all at once, and Loki knew that it was the answer to his boast: if he fought that and won, he could make himself king of all the world of winter. But first he had to find it; he changed shape before the eyes of the trees and continued to head north.

Even from here it took him long days to reach the wall, despite the speed and endurance of a god. He saw it from a distance, and even he was amazed as he finally reached it where it rose sheer from the ground, the top of it barely visible against the sky. The sun was high, and drops of water left white tracks against the dirty ice. Loki resumed his own form and walked up to rest his hand against the rough surface. It hummed with magic, magic of binding, of guarding, but also of breaking apart: the earth resented it, the trees knew it for a barrier. He tried to send his awareness through it, to see what lay beyond, and found nothing: his magic could not penetrate it. Loki stepped back and tried to send his awareness over it, but although he could sense that the Wall had a top, it seemed to rise and rise against his magic: there seemed to be no way over. He changed shape again, to Jotun, to see if the ice responded to that form, but there was no change. The Wall stood against god and giant.

And when had he started to think of it as the Wall, he wondered. He sighed to himself; some things even a god had simply to keep working at. The ice was rough under his hands, and he could see a path of holds and narrow ledges going up. Up, and up, and up. There was no point questioning the wisdom of this course, he thought; his decision was made.

Loki started to climb. He was the son of Laufey, king of Jotunheim. He was raised in Asgard, taught by Frigga herself. No magic wall of ice was going to defeat him, no matter how tall it was, no matter how many days it had taken him to reach it.

As he pulled himself onto the top, the sun began to set on his left, turning the Wall shades of blue and pink; its shadow reached across the forests stretching north, and a gleam of light flashed on a peak of snow far to the north. A god's sight showed him the small villages, the army of human Free Folk moving south, the great hairy giants among them. The dead walked in the woods as well, their eyes shining with the power of the cold gods who set them in motion. Loki searched for those Others as well with his mind, and found something else: a hint of warmth, of green growth in the roots of the trees. It seemed to fade away as he watched, and he sent his mind past the forests, where ice and snow stretched away into nothingness.

Night fell as his mind wandered through the hidden land before him. It was quiet at the top of the Wall. He hadn't realised how the whispering of the trees below had filled his mind, but whatever had blocked his own magic from seeing through the wall blocked their noise as well. In the dark the crows and ravens slept among the leaves, and the owls that hunted did so far, far below him. A meteor fell, far to the north, and the stars continued their orderly march; they seemed close up here, close enough to reach up and hold, but he knew Asgard was lost to him, and turned his eyes away.

He waited for the sun to rise before half-climbing, half leaping to the bottom. There was a gap between the Wall and the first trees; he stretched in the weak sunlight before walking into the shadows, drawing invisibility over himself as he went. Even so, he felt something watching him: the Wall itself, perhaps, or the faces on the trees. 

He saw few men as he made his way through forests, across rivers: wolves and deer, and a wildcat that followed him a while. He encountered two small groups of the Free Folk; they didn't see him, but their dogs howled as he went past.

When the trees grew thin and the snow hard under his feet he put aside illusion. There was no one to see him but the creatures of ice and death; the predators followed their prey south to where trees and lichens still grew, and the air was too cold even for the ravens which might feast on the dead. He saw the first of the Others then, standing vigil or moving slowly south. They seemed to grow out of the landscape itself, white as snow and slow as the creeping ice. They turned their shining blue eyes on him as he went, and called out in a language he didn't understand, like the cracking of ice. He didn't try to answer. They were beneath his notice: he was a prince, and he was looking for their king.

It would be good, Loki thought, to rule this land. He imagined building a great palace of broken ice, with a throne for himself at its heart, where he could sit, surrounded by giants and winter gods. The image of Rickon, asleep and wrapped in furs, intruded into his thoughts, but he pushed it away: there would be no place for humans in Loki's palace. Although perhaps he would make a smaller throne for Rickon, where he could sit with Osha and Shaggy; he would need someone to talk to, after all, and he was not sure that these Others would be much for conversation, even after they learned his tongue. Or perhaps he would send the army of Free Folk south to restore Rickon to his home; it is true that they were weak, but there were so many of them that surely they could do the job. Then Loki could take his new allies with him, returning to Asgard at the head of this new army. Thor had found his power in exile. Loki could surely do the same.

All this time, he could sense the greatest of the Others ahead of him, waiting for his arrival. He found their king, finally, on a cliff of ice. To all directions the frozen wastes stretched out; from here the Great Other could survey all his forces as they marched south, first to the Wall and past it, to all the mortal lands beyond. But as Loki landed beside him, he turned his attention from that huge project, and Loki thrilled to feel the power in him. Here was a truly worthy enemy.

 _Brother_ , the King of the Others said in his mind.

"I am not your brother," Loki answered, and drew his knives.

The Other seemed to smile as he drew his own sword: long and thin, like a shining blade of ice. _We do not need to fight. Join me to destroy the warm world, the world of men._

"I am Loki," he named himself. "Son of Laufey, son of Odin, prince of Asgard and Jotunheim. _You_ will serve _me_!" He threw a knife directly at the Other's face: it struck him in the eye, and shattered.

Well, Loki thought, that was unexpected. Then he had little time for thought, needing instead to duck the blows of that great sword. He twisted to get inside its reach and stabbed again, into the flesh of the Other's neck. Again the blade shattered, cutting his hand as it fell. The Other leaped backwards for another strike, and Loki made a spear out of ice to parry as the sword fell once more. It broke in two, and Loki leaped backward on the uneven ice. _How did you cross the Wall?_ the Other asked. _Tell me and I will spare your life. You wish to rule, little prince. I will bring you south and give you a throne!_

Instead of answering, Loki shaped himself a second spear of ice, the coldest and hardest he could summon, to match the sword which he couldn't fight. The Other leaped forward to strike twice: Loki parried with the spear, which broke, and with his knife, which also broke: he expected both, and ducked to kick the Other back and away. That worked, and he smiled grimly as the Other King staggered. "I climbed it," he said. "Can't you?"

The Other began to circle, and Loki created a dozen doubles to surround him. _What magic did you use?_

Loki almost answered, none, but had to concentrate on fighting as one by one the doubles disappeared against the Other's icy sword. There must be _something_ in this land which would injure him, he thought. He let the next double burst into flame as the blow fell; his heart rose as he saw the Other tried to check the blow, but fell when the Other saw through the illusion of fire and kept coming toward him. The Other made a sound, finally, a kind of clashing laugh like the grinding of ice. He ignored the doubles surrounding him and turned to Loki himself, where he was hanging back. Now it was all he could do to avoid the sword: a ring of fire rose around him, but there was nothing real for him to burn. He pulled the helmet from his head and sent heat coursing up through the horns; they glowed bright as he stabbed with it towards his enemy, but as a weapon it was awkward, and they hissed and cracked when they touched the Other's frozen breastplate. They left two black marks there, and the other leaned away from the metal for a moment before returning to the attack. Loki wrapped his cloak around his arm and let it burst into flame as the great blow fell: it hurt, but the Other staggered back, away from the fire.

"Put aside your sword," Loki said, "and I will tell you what spell I used." The smoking ashes of his cloak scattered black over the ice. 

The Other dropped his sword. _Tell me!_ he demanded. 

Loki let himself disappear against the ice, then turned and ran, faster than he'd ever run in his life.

The Other King's angry cry pursued him as he went, but against the ice Loki was invisible to him and to all his armies, so long as the illusion would hold. It needed to, Loki thought, because the Wall was the only thing that was going to save him now. 

He had to duck and dodge as walls of ice and snow were thrown up around him; the ground was frozen beneath his feet and only his Jotun heritage kept him from slipping. The cold grew stronger, deadly, and he careened around a corner to find himself face to face with an Other, not the King himself, but one of his many servants. The bright blue eyes were watchful and the ice-cold sword held high -- Loki threw up a useless arm and shied away from the blow with never fell. His spell of invisibility held. He laughed to himself and sped away south.

The next one he met, though, he ran into, and was shocked out of invisibility and into the form of a giant when the Other grappled with him; the collision had knocked the icy sword from his hand, and they wrestled in the snow, Loki's hand against the Other's mouth to keep him from calling the rest of his kind, all too aware that he might not even need speech to summon help. Body to body they were of nearly equal strength, both of them drawing strength from the cold land. Little by little Loki turned that cold back against his foe, covering him in layers which cracked and broke and formed again, stronger each time, until the Other was held still in a block of solid ice. Loki grabbed the sword, which burned his hand with cold, and kept running south.

He could already see the line of trees when they made their last attack. This time they rode great mammoths and were followed by packs of wolves, who tracked Loki by scent, not by heat. They surged ahead as he kept running, forced finally at the very edge of the trees to turn and fight. With a gesture he froze the wolves as they attacked. They fell and were trampled as the mammoths charged, too fast and somehow protected by the Others on their backs. Loki stood at the treeline and waited for them to come.

As the Others leaped down to strike at them he was finally able to fight them with one of their own swords -- but even with this he could do no more than wound them. One or two fell, but the rest kept coming, forcing him backward. He nearly tripped over a treeroot before he realised that their very attack had thwarted them: he held the sword in one hand, and with the other gestured the trees on either side into fire. 

The heat hurt him, but not as much as it hurt the Others. They fled backward, wailing in their strange language; hidden by fire, Loki watched them retreat, then turned and headed into the woods.

He was at the end of his strength when he came to a clearing, and hid himself in a drift of leaves like the one he had fallen into. It seemed like a long Tim ago, and Loki thought bitterly of the confidence he had felt when he promised Rickon his kingdom back; Osha had been right to doubt him.

Over the next days he crept like an animal from shadow to shadow. The Others still hunted him through the woods, bringing the cold with them as they went so that they were easier to avoid. Crows called in the leaves above, and the white trees watched with their red eyes. He slept when he could, and was woken by the cold as an Other stared down at him. Loki leaped up, sword in hand, but this time the other fled from him. He turned, stumbling, and found a hole leading down through the knotted roots of a weirwood; he followed it into the earth.

He found himself in a maze of passages, roofed with white weirwood roots. They couldn't see him here, he thought, and the Others wouldn't find him. He kept moving forward, trying to keep going south, but the roots and the passages twisted and shrank, and he found himself having to creep through narrow places, where things scurried out of the corners of his eyes, things he could never quite see, and bones cracked under his hands and feet. There was something here, and it didn't like him.

The feeling was mutual, Loki thought. Whatever was hiding in the shadows would come for him; it was already reaching into his mind, like the roots reached into the soil all around him. The darkness around him was absolute, and his magic seemed weak. He tried to conjure a light, but he stumbled, and for an instant felt himself falling again. There must be a way out, but all he was finding were dead ends. Finally, madness gnawing at his mind, he began to dig upward, through the hard dirt.

His hands were bleeding by the time he reached the surface; he lay on his back in the shadowy sunlight, happy simply to breathe the cold air. The cold air. The air that was getting colder, as the sunlight faded around him: the Others were already near.

He leaped to his feet and ran again. Surely he was nearly to the Wall by now. He could feel its magic now that he was aboveground, but he could also feel the cold of the Others, cracking the trees and hardening the ground. He turned back, pulling a broken branch to his hands and setting it ablaze. The flaming spear kept the Others away, but couldn't kill them. He kept backing south, and they circled around him, until finally, finally, he came to the edge of the trees. He didn't wait to see if they would follow him into the sunlight.

The Wall rose sheer before him, but terror drove him to leap straight up it: he clung to a crack in the ice, and spared a moment to set a tree below ablaze. That might drive the Others away, he hoped. He settled his toes and fingers and began to climb, inch by inch. The muscles in his burned arm ached, but he ignored them.

It was nothing like the other side: the ice was sheer and slippery. Here Loki slid and gasped and stretched and had to stop for breath: even a god's strength was hardly enough to take him all the way. He did not have the power to climb and to make the illusion of invisibility, but he was terribly aware of the target he made, even against this shadowed side of the Wall. It was dark by the time he reached the top; his arms were shaking and his fingers so cramped he could not unbend them. He pushed himself over the edge with the last strength in his legs and lay on his back to watch the stars move across the sky above him. The trembling in his limbs eventually stopped, and pain replaced the numbness in his hands and feet. Asgard was somewhere up there, he thought. He closed his eyes, as if the childish belief that if you couldn't see them they couldn't see you was true.

The sun woke him: he screwed up his eyes against the light and winced in pain when he tried to raise his arm to rub away the sleep; his mother's healing charms seemed to work more quickly on others than on himself. Or perhaps he simply hadn't been aware of whether Shaggy's wound still hurt after Loki had set the healing process in motion.

He sat up, then stood, and walked slowly to the edge of the wall. The climb down would be terrible as well, he thought, and he was not sure his magic was strong enough to allow him to land safely if he flew. Then he laughed: below him was a stone castle, huddled against the wall, and leading down a set of steps carved into the ice. They might be slick and treacherous to a human, but his own feet would be certain on the ice, especially now, before the sun had warmed them.

Halfway down he realised that he wasn't alone on this side of the Wall. In the castle courtyard there was a wolf, smaller than Rickon's direwolf but recognisably on the same scale, even from this distance. A figure came out and looked up, and then ran back inside. Soon, as Loki continued to descend, there was a whole group: the wolf, two children, and a large man carrying a small boy in a basket on his back. 

They were silent as he finally reached to bottom; now the boy who had been carried was seated on the basket, the man behind him younget than Loki had thought. The great wolf lay at his feet, the others, now clearly a boy and a girl, clustered around and staring. They were all infants, Loki thought, wandering lost through this empty country. "I met another boy who had a wolf companion," Loki finally remarked to break the silence. "Smaller than you." And this boy, the one before him, had much more power. There was a depth to his mind that Loki could not quite plumb, something rustling behind his eyes that made the hair stand up on Loki's unburnt arm. "Are you Bran?"

"You met Rickon?" Bran asked eagerly. "When? Was he well?"

"It was..." Loki realised that he had no idea how long it had taken him to go north and then return. "It was many days ago, at least, but he seemed well. He was still with Osha, but he wanted to go home."

"I know," Bran said. 

"You've been over the Wall," the girl said. "How did you manage that? Are there handholds on the other side? I didn't see them."

"Is this what you saw?" Bran asked the boy. "Are we going to go over the Wall, not through it?"

"I don't know," he said. He frowned at Loki. "Who are you? You haven't been in my dreams."

"I think he was in one of mine, though," Bran said. "You were in a circle of weirwoods, and you turned into a wolf. Summer says you smell like a wolf. Are you here to help us?"

"Help you do what?" Loki asked.

"We need to go north, Jojen says, beyond the Wall. He dreamed that we would come here, and there would be a way through."

The other boy (was this Jojen, Loki wondered) was still frowning. "I dreamed of a way through, not a way over," he said.

"I am not going over that Wall again," Loki said. "Are you all mad? You're only children, and even if I could get you over -- and no, there are no handholds on the other side -- it's full of unkillable ice monsters and dead men and there is _something_ hiding under the ground out there, and--"

"Did you see the three-eyed crow while you were there?" Bran interrupted.

"The three-eyed crow?" It sounded like a riddle to Loki, and a riddle with Odin as the answer. He had seen his father at the World-Tree, a raven on his shoulder.

"He's supposed to teach me, so that I can be a greenseer as well."

"Why can't you just wait for your brother Robb?" Loki asked. These children were confusing him with their questions and their assumption that he would know what they were talking about. "Rickon told me that he was coming back." In Loki's mind Robb still looked very like Thor, and if there was one thing Thor could be counted on to do, it was to turn up at the last minute to save the day. After his time beyond the Wall, Loki was forced to admit he was almost looking forward to that.

"But we don't know when," the girl said. "Bran has to stay hidden until then."

"Robb isn't coming back, Meera," Bran said. "He died. He was killed, and so was mother. I saw it."

It was news to the others, Loki could tell by their reactions. The big boy cried "Hodor!" as if it meant something terrible and Meera asked Bran why he hadn't told them. But Loki could see what Bran had seen: the boy falling dead, who looked nothing like Thor after all, the woman reaching out from a pool of blood as her eyes faded. He saw other glimpses too: the corpse with the wolf's head sewn to it, the naked body of the woman being pulled from the river, her hair dark against the wound on her neck. 

"Jojen knew as well," Bran said. "Didn't you?"

Jojen shrugged. "I wasn't sure," he said. "And anyway, it didn't matter. We still have to go north."

"Didn't matter!" Loki said. He could still see the jagged, bloody wound in the woman's neck. If he had been a few moments later, if Laufey had killed Frigga before he could come to the rescue -- he saw in an instant how stupidly dangerous his clever plan had been. His stomach felt light, as if he was falling all over again, down into black nothingness. 

Jojen was watching Bran carefully; he looked older than his years, Loki thought, and Bran, his eyes filling with tears, looked younger. He blinked them back; the wolf whined softly and rested his head on the boy's lap, where Bran could run his fingers through the coarse fur. "I didn't want it to be true," he said. "That's why I didn't say anything. If Robb isn't coming back, then maybe we can never go back to Winterfell."

"No," Meera said. "You will go back. You aren't just our prince now, Bran. You are the King in the North."

"Not really," Bran said. "You know I can't be a king like this. A king needs to fight, and I'm just a crippled boy." Loki frowned at that; he had assumed that whatever injuries kept the boy from standing could be healed somewhere on this planet.

"That isn't true, Bran," said Jojen. "You are a greenseer."

"I know," Bran said miserably. "And I don't want to be a king, not like Robb was. I just want Robb and mother to still be alive, and to see Sansa and Arya, and to go home." He sniffled. "I even miss Rickon. I didn't want to tell you, because that would make it real, and now it is real, Robb and... and mother..."

In Loki's mind Thor now lay beside his mother in the blood. He could see himself returning from exile, ready to fight, but too late. Too late; there would be nothing he could do for them. He found himself kneeling in the cold mud of the courtyard before the little boy on the basket. "I promised your brother to help him return to Winterfell," he said. "I don't know how to do that right now, but perhaps I can take you somewhere they can heal your legs. Not over the Wall," he added.

Bran shook his head. "Maester Luwin was sure I would never walk again," he said. "I fell too far."

Loki's mouth twisted. "I've fallen a long way as well." He felt at the moment he was falling still.

"The three-eyed crow said he would teach me to fly. He said he could heal me. I think you really are him, and you just don't know it yet."

"No," Loki said. "I'm no crow. My name is Loki, I'm just a stranger here."

The big boy carried Bran into the kitchen, a huge eight-sided room with a roof that was whole except where a weirwood was growing up from the broken floor through it. There were great hearths along one wall, and they kindled a fire in one with the wood Meera had collected. "Do you need water?" Meera asked him, glancing at the centre of the room, where steps led down to what had once been a well.

Loki shook his head. Now that it was time to start, he found himself afraid of failure. "Healing spells are not something I know well," he said, as Hodor settled Bran in front of him, leaning him against Summer's body so that Loki could see his back. He could trace the paths the boy's magic made through him, and see where his body's power was blocked; in Asgard, he suspected, it would be easy enough to heal Bran. He wondered as well whether this was a kind of work Thor would do well: the power that moved the boy's legs was something akin to lightning. Not that Thor had ever given much attention to healing; maybe he would, now that he was king. Loki sent a pulse of his own lightning down the boy's back, and saw the gap it needed to bridge. "Can you feel that?" he asked. Bran shook his head. "There is a place where the pulse which makes you move needs to leap over a kind of gap. If you look within yourself you might be able to see it." Loki sent a second pulse up from the boy's legs. Bran frowned, and Loki felt him trying to sink within his own body and resisting it at the same time: he did not like his own weakness. "You can't control what is outside you until you can control and understand yourself," he said. It was something his mother had told him, a long time ago, when she had begun to teach him magic. But he hadn't understood his own self then, not until he had learned his true nature, and now his own magic was at war with itself. He sighed to himself and sent another pulse pushing against the gap between Bran's back and his legs.

"Ow!" Bran said. Loki started back as the boy twisted himself around. "No, I felt that! It was only a kind of tingle, but I felt it!"

"That's wonderful, Bran!" Meera said, pushing between them and kissing the child. Bran's cheeks grew pink. "We should celebrate!"

"Hodor!" the big boy agreed.

Was that all he could say, Loki wondered, but then turned his attention back to Bran. "It isn't healed," he said. "You will have to learn to see the gap for yourself, and to force the energy across it. It may become easier over time, but it also may never really heal."

"I'll work at it every day," Bran said. "I promise!"

"Does this mean you _will_ cross the Wall with us?" Jojen asked.

Loki hesitated. "Perhaps. But I think you underestimate how dangerous it is."

"Maybe we don't have to go any further," Bran said. "Maybe Loki can heal me here."

"And what will you do when the Boltons and their allies come looking for us? Loki is a stranger in the North and even he knew you at once."

Bran's face was set, as if this was a long argument. "That at least I can fix," he said. In a moment they were changed: Bran had short blond hair and a round, open face, Jojen dark skin and Meera red hair in freckles. He gave himself the face of a man he vaguely remembered, with short gray hair and wrinkles. He switched the children's worn and ragged clothes for the rich, bright fabrics of Asgard. And to finish it off he changed summer to a miniature pony, with golden hair and mane. The wolf was almost big enough to ride already. Meera laughed, but the wolf growled at them and bared its square teeth.

"Hodor!"

"Yes," Meera said. "What will you do for Hodor?"

Loki smiled to himself. He gave the boy the face of an older man, lined but still strong. White hair, one blue eye and the other covered by a patch to hide old damage. His father's face, but eerily wrong without his father's wisdom in it. 

"Who is that?" Bran asked. 

"No one," Loki said, and with a gesture the illusion disappeared.

The children shared their meagre dinner of fish with him. Afterward the rest prepared to sleep; Hodor wandered through the shadowy kitchen and Loki stared into the flames, trying to decide what to do. He knew he did not want to return to the other side of the Wall, but he also knew he didn't want Bran to go there without his support, and Bran was determined to find this three-eyed crow. If it even existed; Loki found the entire situation doubtful, and thought the children needed someone older to look after them. He just wished it didn't have to be him.

He jumped as an unearthly wailing echoed up from the stone well at the centre of the room.

"Hodor," Bran asked, "what did you just do?"

The big man held a cracked bit of paving over the mouth of the well. "No!" Meera said. "You don't know what's down there!"

Now there was more noise coming up from the well: not just the wailing, but cries of pain as well, and some kind of shouting. Hodor responded by shouting his own name back until the sounds were jumbled together, high and low, wailing and shouting. "Hodor," Loki said, pulling him away from the well. "Stop it!" He peered over the edge, alongside Jojen and Meera. Whatever was down there, it wasn't happy. Meera was holding her spear, and a net, ready to thrust down at anything coming up. Loki made a light in his hand and sent it drifting slowly down the well.

Down and down it went, shining on bare stone walls and worn stone stairs; finally they saw a round white face, with a round mouth at the centre of it. It was shouting something, but whatever it was jumbled into nonsense as it echoed up the sides of the well. Loki drew his last remaining knife; he hoped that whatever this was, it wasn't also proof against Asgardian metal.

After what seemed like an age the wailing began to dwindle, and they could see that the round face belonged to a round man walking slowly up the stairs. His mouth was round because he was puffing with the effort of coming up, and up and up, and because he was very fat. The wailing had started again, but now they could see that it was coming from a human infant held by a woman coming up the stairs behind the man. A boy, Loki thought, and a girl; more children. He was beginning to suspect that he and Osha were the only adults left in the North. At the top the fat boy collapsed on the floor. He didn't look much of a threat: he looked exhausted and dirty and a little scared. The girl seemed hardier; she came up last steps and stood at the edge of the well, looking around her at the shadowed room. "Is one of you the spellmaker?" she asked hesitantly, clutching the baby so that it whimpered.

The children all looked at Loki. "I have some knowledge of magic," he said carefully. 

"He can do spells," Meera said. "Who are you? How did you get into the well?"

"I'm Gilly," the girl said. "That's Sam. He was supposed to take you back through the passage, that's how we crossed the Wall, but the face in the door said we couldn't, and we had to find this spellmaker person. So now I don't know."

"The face in the door?" Jojen asked.

"Sam can explain better," she said. "Sam, get up!"

Sam pushed himself up off his back. "It's because the Others are there, the door won't open again. It said we needed to find another way."

"Another way over the Wall?" Bran asked.

"Another way to fix the Wall. It's weak, I think, the spells are weak, and the Others are trying to get through. It said we had to tell the stark. Are you him?" He looked around at the five of them, and then his eyes settled on Summer, still lying by Bran's side. "Oh," he said suddenly, "you're Jon's brother, the one who fell. You're the Stark. I know Jon. Knew him, I mean." He paused. "I'm sorry."

"Start at the beginning," Loki said. "Who are you, and what are you talking about?"

The story came out in pieces, and even then Loki barely understood it. At the end he said, "So there is a face in a door under the Wall, and it spoke to you." Sam nodded. "I think I had better go see it myself."

Sam sighed. "I'll take you." When Loki protested he said, "No, I do need to. I'm a man of the Night's Watch, and it needs the words to open."

"I'll come too," Bran said. "You said it wanted us both. Hodor will carry me."

"Hodor," Hodor agreed.

Sam sighed again, and led them down. The mouth of the well faded above them, and all the light Loki conjured seemed to do no more than cast more shadows. It was cold, as well. Hodor shivered and grumbled all the way down, and Sam huffed and mumbled to himself. Loki would have shuddered too, but had his dignity to protect; he didn't want Bran to think he was afraid, in case it frightened the boy. He could hear water at the bottom, but when he sent a light down, there was nothing reflected back up.

"Stop," Sam said all of a sudden. He had paused a handful of steps below then, before the gate: a white face on white wood, like the trees that had seemed to surround Loki everywhere he went. As he watched it opened its eyes, and then opened its mouth.

"Who are you?" the face said. The question echoed back: _who-who-who-who-who?_

"I am the sword in the darkness," Sam said, and to Loki's eyes he suddenly seemed more than the tired fat bot he'd been before. "I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of men."

"Who are you?" The face said again. _you-you-you-you-you..._

"It didn't do that before," Sam said, twisting his hands in his ragged cloak.

Loki stepped down to stand directly behind him on the narrow stairs. He felt like the door might reach out and send him falling down the well, and knew that if it did he would be falling forever. "I am the spell-maker," he said. "I am Loki." 

"Spell-maker," it said. "Loki of Asgard, Frigga's son and Odin's. Stay. Find the Builder. Heal the Wall." There was nothing behind the eyes, only blackness. "Spell-maker."

"What builder?" Loki asked, but the eyes closed, and the mouth sagged down, and the door itself seemed to fade into the stones of the well.

"Bran the Builder," Bran said. "He built the Wall, and Winterfell too. He was the first Stark."

"Your namesake," Loki said. He didn't need to ask; of course names would have some power here. "Perhaps you're the builder."

"I can't be," Bran said. "He was a hero. I'm just..." He trailed off.

"I'm sure even this fabled Bran the Builder had help," Loki said. On the steps above him, Hodor was turning around, ready to go back up.

"Yes," Bran said. "The giants helped him. But I don't think there are any giants any more."

The giants helped him, Loki thought. Of course; somewhere out there Odin was surely laughing at him. "You'd be surprised," he said.

"Can we go back up?" Sam asked. "It's dark down here, and there are all those stairs."

"Hodor," Hodor agreed.

"You will help me, won't you?" Bran asked, as Hodor began to climb.

"I will," Loki said. "We'll build this wall, you and I, and Winterfell as well."

end


End file.
